


Spaceships Are Lifting Off of a Dying World

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Additional Alternate Ending, Angst, Blood and Injury, Death, Established Relationship, Imprisonment, M/M, Suicide, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 03:52:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5651515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forced to crash land on an unknown planet, Poe is apprehended and taken to a First Order prison camp. He must draw on all his strength to survive the grueling months, but when help finally comes it may be too late for Finn and Rey to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK: [Strawberry Swing by Frank Ocean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbnBy_WFIhU)
> 
>  
> 
> _say hello_  
>  then say farewell  
> to the places you know  
> we are all mortals aren't we  
> any moment this could go  
> cry cry cry even though  
> that won't change a thing  
> but you should know  
> you should hear  
> that i have loved  
> i have loved the good times here  
> and i will miss  
> our good times here
> 
>  
> 
> _spaceships are lifting off_  
>  of a dying world  
> and millions are left behind  
> while the sky burns  
> there wasn't room for you and i  
> only you  
> goodbye  
> goodbye
> 
>  
> 
> (Finn is 23 and Poe is 32 in TFA. This is set ~7 years after the movie in no discernible timeline or plot, making Finn 30 and Poe 39.) (The Maw is a location in the Kessel System mentioned in the EU, a cluster of blackholes.)

Night and day didn't really exist at the camp; there was just cold and colder, gray and grayer, dark and darker. Poe lost track of the days forever ago. Last he counted was sixty-three, just over two months. In his heart he knew it wasn't terribly long but his bones ached with exhaustion and he began slipping. First he stopped counting the days. Then he stopped watching the sky, waiting for the telltale V formation of X-wings. Finally he stopped telling people things were going to be okay, because they weren't.

 

There were so many people. This had to have been the First Order's largest prison camp. It stretched for a healthy few kilometers, hard brown dirt wrapped in electrically-charged barbed wire fences and topped with guard towers. For a long time Poe tried to find weak points in the fence, tried to gauge sympathy from the guards, tried to press his palm against the dying's foreheads and let them down easy. At first they were all in awe of him—Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron is here to save us—but, somewhere between passing out in the middle of the yard and losing three fingers on his right hand after getting tortured, the novelty wore off.

 

Poe couldn't save anyone. He was weak and starving and hurt just as much as them. It enraged him. Everyone was disappointed in him. I tried, he wanted to say. There had been a First Order convoy he was trailing near Kessel with a small group of soldiers. After stopping to refuel the convoy bugged his ship and halfway through the system a pistol was pointed at the back of his head. “Easy does it, now,” the assassin said.

 

The Maw was a ripple before them, a safe distance away. Poe's jaw clenched as he stared at it through the viewport. In the bunks were two soldiers and a medic Finn himself had trained, a fresh recruit who was just nineteen, the same age Rey had been when Poe first met her.

 

The safety on the pistol clicked off.

 

“Come on, now.”

 

A bead of sweat formed on Poe's brow. He slowly lifted his hands from the joysticks, knowing that at their current speed he'd be close enough to the Maw if he dragged this out.

 

“That's it.” The muzzle of the pistol jostled against his head. “Want you to stand up and turn around. Don't speak. You do anything besides that and I'll kill you. Your friends will hear and I'll have to shoot them too and I don't like messes. They're too much of a bitch to clean up. But I'll do it, I swear.”

 

Poe obliged, blinking slowly. He wasn't in his flightsuit, fitted with emergency gear, for a long mission like this; just a dark gray shirt and black pants, but he had a knife strapped to the inside of his boot. The assassin—masked face, wide stance, decidedly neutral outfit—wasn't First Order, but hired. The Resistance intel never mentioned anything like that. They were falling behind. And now Poe had to do something, fast, or it was all about to get worse.

 

The assassin manhandled shackles onto his wrists. Poe willed himself to remain still, remembering Jakku and burning bodies and Kylo Ren's brain-splitting Force. When he looked up he saw the medic in the hallway beyond the cockpit, silent and terrified. Poe flicked his eyes to the left. The medic turned his head and blanched. There was a tiny offshoot with escape pods.

 

Poe narrowed his eyes, trying to make sure the kid knew he had to do this. He had to. There couldn't be any acts of valor. Thankfully he wasn't hardheaded enough to argue and hurried away.

 

“Poe Dameron,” the assassin said, circling him, making a big show of his height and the fact that Poe was imprisoned. “You're a son of a bitch to catch, you know? Except you were too slow. Just for a second. Back at the pit stop, talking to your man, distracted. Cute. I gotta admit.” He tapped the ring on Poe's left hand. “Married, even? I'll be damned. Hate to break up such a lovely union.”

 

He didn't sound apologetic at all. “Fuck you,” Poe snapped.

 

The assassin frowned, stared at Poe for a moment, then scoffed and looked away. “You aren't worth it. Trying to get me all riled up, huh? Because you can't do anything else but get angry. I've been in this business a long time, boy, and I know nothing's worse than feeling absolutely powerless.” He sat down in the pilot's seat and ran his hands over the controls. “I won't give you the gratification though. That's a big word, ain't it? I know more. Like dismemberment. Asphyxiation.” Poe sneered when the assassin swung around in the seat. “I'd hate to see a pretty boy such as yourself get chopped up into little pieces. That's what the First Order's gonna do, you know. I'll strike you a deal, instead.”

 

“How generous,” Poe quipped.

 

“I truly am,” the assassin agreed. “I know you got systems on here, databanks on all the friends of the Order. Or competition, as I like to call them. You let me get those files and this ship and I'll drop you and your friends off at the next hunk'a rock.”

 

“What, so you can wipe out all the other assholes and get more opportunity to murder and steal? No thanks.” Behind him Poe heard the hiss of the escape pods opening, then closing. His shoulders nearly sagged in relief but he forced himself to remain taut. “Look,” he continued, louder so as to cover up the sound of the pods, “only one of us is getting off this ship alive. And it's going to be me.”

 

He swung his boot around and kicked the gun out of the assassin's hand. The assassin shouted and charged, but Poe was quick and ducked out of the way. The assassin smacked to the ground and Poe stomped on his head, heard a sickening crack, and staggered backward. An alert sounded on the control panel—the escape pods got away safe.

 

Poe dropped to his knees beside the puddle of blood and looted the assassin's pockets for the controls to the shackles. Eventually the ship began rocking as they neared the Maw, and Poe gave up to try and steady the ship. Once he sat down in the pilot's seat a blast singed his shoulder; he whipped around and saw the assassin leaning against the wall covered in blood, the pistol loosely held in his hand.

 

“Fuck!” Poe shouted, his wrists beginning to bleed in his restraints. Another blast hit the viewport but Poe couldn't move, the ship thrown out of control by the blackhole cluster. This was no Millennium Falcon and Poe was no Han Solo.

 

“Damn you!” the assassin shouted. Poe ignored him, tried banking up against the Maw's gravitational pull, but it was no use. He saw a planet underneath them, smoky and desolate, and closed his eyes, took a moment to sag against the controls.

 

He had no way to move his arms but his hands had limited purchase, and the commlink button was just a few inches from the joysticks.

 

“This is Commander Dameron,” he began rattling off. “The carrier's been compromised by, uh,”—Another blast rounded off and Poe scowled—“shit, man! We're fucking dying anyways.” He sighed and refocused, his heart beating wildly. “The carrier's been compromised. I can't get control. We're too close to the Maw. The rest of the team's escaped safety. I'm—I'm going to have to run the ship into the ground.”

 

After some static there was a reply. “I—Commander, I—Where's the general!?” Garbled voices tangled in the static. Poe grit his teeth as the carrier lurched again.

 

“I don't have time,” he said.

 

“Poe.” It was General Organa. Tense and professional. “Poe, we're sending help, don't worry.”

 

“I don't have time,” he repeated and paused. “Where's Finn?”

 

The general paused. Then her voice cracked. “Don't do this, Poe.”

 

“I want to talk to him.”

 

There was more yelling and the assassin was groaning and cursing behind him, firing off random shots into the ceiling and walls. Poe lifted his head and watched the Maw.

 

After thousands of years the nature of blackholes was still unknown. No one alive knew where they went and the ones who did never survived to tell. Poe remembered theories of multidimensional travel and wondered if he could fly through the Maw and show up at the ranch on Yavin. After getting married he and Finn went back and fixed it up; Kes long dead, the place was run over with weeds and decay but they rebuilt it all piece by piece. They didn't have much time to spend at home but there was always the promise of someday settling down. Poe felt foolish for having faith.

 

“Poe?”

 

“Finn,” Poe breathed, smiling. “Finn. Hi.”

 

“Poe, listen to me. You'll be fine. You aren't going to die. There's a whole squad on its way. ”

 

“I love you.” Poe laughed deliriously. “Tell that to the general, too. And Rey. And BB-8. Take care of BB-8 for me. He'll be sad but he likes you better.”

 

“No he doesn't,” Finn said. “You know that.”

 

The ship bucked petulantly. Poe smacked his head against the control panel and groaned, his forehead bursting into hot pain with his shoulder.

 

“What happened?” Finn demanded. “Are you okay?”

 

“I love you,” Poe mumbled.

 

“No. No, no, no. Don't make me do this. Poe, please. You'll be okay.”

 

“I gotta go,” Poe said. “Finn, I have to go. Right now. I love you. I have to go.”

 

Finn paused. “I love you too,” he replied thickly.

 

Poe desperately fumbled for the holoprojector button. Finn's face flickered into blue light. His husband watched him stonily. He was so strong. Not even crying. If he cried Poe would too and then he'd get sucked into the Maw. He took the joysticks ins his hands.

 

“I might make it,” he said. “This is my only chance.”

 

“You will,” Finn insisted.

 

“I just want to see you, okay?” Poe said.

 

Finn nodded silently.

 

Poe swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn't force himself to look away.

 

“Hey.” Finn smiled. “I thought you could fly anything?”

 

Poe grinned and blinked away tears, despite himself. “I can. You bastard.”

 

“Prove it.”

 

And Poe did.

 

The carrier careened to the left and right and Poe forced the nose down. He had to accelerate as much as possible to break away from the Maw—once he broke through the planet's atmosphere the ship steadied, but it was going so fast any possibility of surviving the impact was slim. There were giant smokestack cities dotting the land, and Poe tried steering toward a few barren forests in hope that the trees would lessen the crash. Eventually all he could do was sit and wait. Finn's image blinked out and he didn't even notice.

 

The rest was a bloody blur of fragmented memories.

 

Poe remembered crawling out of the mess of the cockpit, the assassin's corpse bled out and crunched into a pulp behind him. The pilot's seat had an emergency deflector buff for things like this which was the only reason Poe survived at all. The controls to the shackles must've smashed because the restraints dropped to the ground, leaving Poe's wrists chafed bright red.

 

He took his knife out of his boot and crouched low to the ground, keeping to shadows, the lessons his war-hardened father taught him on camping trips kicking in. Kes was always a stickler for survivability and random tests of prowess. “You never know what’ll happen,” his father told him once as Poe tried to keep his arms steady with hands wrapped around an old blaster rifle, the butt heavy against his shoulder as he aimed at a rabbit. The animal went down with a shot right between the eyes. Poe ignored the weight in his chest as he moved to pick up the fallen creature. Before they made it back to the ranch Poe pretended to trip and lose it; later he went back and buried it.

  


Kes wasn’t a bad or unstable man. He had his gentle, kind moments. But killing innocent animals “just in case” was the kind of thing that imprinted itself on a boy’s subconscious. Yet it ended up helping Poe later on, first when his mother died, then during his time with the Republic and eventually the Resistance. As the Order rose Poe felt prepared to see death all around him.

  


He was eerily calm as he stumbled through the forest, the burn on his shoulder worsening and the cut on his head tacky with congealed blood and sweat. He never thought about dying, himself, too cocky to even consider the prospect. When it was so close and imminent, though, he was unafraid. He'd known death all his life and he wasn't scared. He'd be too dead to worry about what happened after he died.

  


The adrenaline that had been pounding through his veins during the fight and crash and initial hike was fading, replaced with a deep ache and mounting exhaustion, and that was when the First Order took him, waiting with open arms in the night. He was blindfolded and gagged and thrown into a ship, then transported to the prison camp.

  


That was sixty-three plus days ago. Any fight had been wrung out of Poe. He was expecting pain, persuasion, hate, all at once, overwhelming. He could have worked through that. But nothing can survive this slow burn, the day-to-day struggle, the absolutely soul-wrenching monotony.

  


There were other Resistance members, even a few pilots, but their past selves were washed out and wilted. Poe barely recognized them; some didn't even remember him. He clung onto the fear of losing himself like a buoy—that and the wedding ring tied around his neck with fraying string, too precious to be worn on his hand. He still had to remember Finn and recognize him whenever he came.

  


After day forty Poe began seeing Finn around every corner and in the helmets of the stormtroopers. He talked to Finn at night, closed his eyes when the hunger and desperation became too much and thought of the ranch. After being probed by the Force he swore to himself he'd die before giving information again and upheld his promise. They tortured him daily. Soon enough they stopped asking questions. Poe learned how to disassociate from himself and float off to Yavin, think about Finn's smile and the sun in the trees until a broken bone wrenched him back to the present.

  


Suicide was an epidemic and innovation was at an all time high. Some would try climbing the fence knowing they'd get a blast through the head; others hung themselves with sheets and clothes tied together to form a noose; some stopped breathing and waited to suffocate; and then there were those who simply went to sleep and never woke up again. Poe watched it all, unafraid. No one bothered with condolences or services anymore, so Poe took it upon himself to bury all the bodies just like he buried the rabbit on Yavin. The trouble came when he lost three fingers and couldn't hold the shovel well anymore.

  


Poe was laying down on top of a new grave, the shovel beside him, when a guard interrupted his reminisce. “Dameron,” the guard barked, “get up.”

  


Poe continued looking at the sky. The camp was always covered in a film of wet gray fog, like a smothering blanket. Today was no different.

  


The guard kicked him in the side. “I said get up.”

  


“Easy, hoss,” Poe said, rising. His head swam and he blinked away the dark spots across his vision.

  


The guard pulled him up by the arm, light as a feather. “One day we'll break you.”

  


Poe remembered what Finn had told him about growing up in the Order, trauma shared in bits and pieces over the years. If Finn could survive twenty-three years Poe could survive sixty-three plus days.

  


“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said.

  


The guard didn't reply. No one ever bounced back his sass anymore. It was getting boring.

  


He was dragged to another cement block, strapped to another table. The metal was cold and unforgiving against Poe's head. He let it all slip away until he was in Yavin, on the grass beside Finn, nothing but flowers underneath him and no graves. The sky was bright and blue. Poe thought about it for a second and made it dark, interspersed with shards of light. It perpetually drizzled at the camp, leaving everything dreary and muddy and disgusting, but it never truly rained, not like the Yavin gale. And so Poe laid down beside Finn and let the storm wash everything away.

  


Distantly there were voices, but he ignored them. Then there were flashes of pain and he replaced them with Finn's hands.

  


The door slammed open and the rain stopped and Poe gasped.

  


A familiar figure strode toward him in a black cape and black gloves and black hat. When he took his hat off Poe finally recognized him as General Hux. The man was gaunt and sharp and mean, eyes like ice. His gloves seemed to glow but maybe that was Poe's mind playing tricks.

  


General Hux told the guards to leave and pulled a chair up beside Poe, sat down and spoke amiably. “Hello, Commander.”

  


“Took you long enough,” Poe said. “I was a little offended.”

  


“I apologize; I was busy training.”

  


“Ah.” Poe narrowed his eyes, and there really was a new aura around General Hux. “Picking up where Kylo Ren left off?”

  


“Succeeding where he failed, more like.” General Hux cocked his head like Poe was a squirmy little bug. “Now I can practice my new skills on you.”

  


Poe tried conjuring the rains of Yavin but it was hopeless. His heart and head thrashed against what he knew to be inevitable. “That's impossible,” he said, stalling.

  


“Supreme Leader Snoke has more power than you could ever imagine.” General Hux flexed his hands. “Kylo Ren could never had the capacity, not with his family. The Skywalker name is a liability. I have no such limitations.” He placed his palm against Poe's forehead and Poe seized, but belatedly realized all he felt was the cold leather. The touch was deceivingly soft and intimate. “I will grow as much as the Supreme Leader will allow me to.”

  


And slowly, like poison, the Force trickled into Poe's brain. He gasped and strained against the belts holding his body down, but for now it wasn't bad. He closed his eyes and relaxed, worked around it, shut off any axillary sensations, padlocked his memories of Finn and Rey and Luke Skywalker and all he held dear. Rey had used the Force on him a handful of times—when he was in the grips of a nightmare, when he was injured and she redirected the pain, when she spoke soft and wise like only a Jedi could and wanted to prove to him he could rely on her—but it was always cool and gentle like cleansing rain. And Kylo had been pure fire, a storm of scarlet pain, but General Hux was different, lava crawling across the smoking ground, pooling into crevices and burning Poe from the inside out, meticulously disciplined and methodological.

  


He wasn't born with the Force and that was what made him so powerful, Poe realized. He had learned everything with tight control. There were not emotional outbursts or inhibitions because he didn't have an innate power within him. It was all purposeful and exact.

  


Poe cried out, his head bursting with muscle memory. Hux's hands glowed brighter but then faltered and fizzled out and Poe sobbed, falling against the table.

  


“Why won't you tell me?” Hux shouted. Poe's mind was aflame again but he realized it was directionless, a crescendo with no peak. In the dips of the ebb and flow he panted and thought. Hux couldn't see anything because he didn't have a two-way connection. He could only transmit the Force, but never receive.

His glow faltered and he spun to the door, eyes widening. In the same moment Poe felt a cleansing rain and blinked up at the ceiling.

  


It was Rey.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK: [Gale Song by The Lumineers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw2llfhKtq4)
> 
> _I wasn't there to take his place.  
>  I was ten thousand miles away.  
> So when you hear my voice,  
> When you say my name,  
> May it never give you pain._
> 
> _But I don't wanna go,  
>  But it's time to leave.  
> You'll be on my mind, my destiny._
> 
> _And I won't fight in vain.  
>  I'll love you just the same, oh._

Rey burst through the door, lightsaber singing between her dirtied hands, and gasped. “Poe,” she said, eyes wavering. Then she looked at Hux and scowled. “You.”

 

Poe's head was a mess of heat and rain and confusion. He fuzzily blinked at Rey, then at Hux, unsurprised when the man just happened to have a red lightsaber. Rey's eyes widened; it must have been Kylo Ren's.

 

“Why do you have that?” she asked, shoulders wound back, face tight and hardened.

 

Hux swung the blade up and she parried it easily. “It was a gift from the Supreme Leader.”

 

“Did you kill him?” Rey asked, dancing back. “Ben?”

 

Hux scoffed at the name. “He begged me to.”

 

Rey faltered, shocked, and Hux whipped his blade into her side. She cried out and pushed him away with the Force; he smacked against the wall and slid, then rose again laughing with blood dripping down his face.

 

Poe really hated all the theatrics. He weakly struggled against his restraints but it was futile. Hux clambered toward him and slapped a gloved hand down over his eyes. Poe screamed and arched off the table as the world snapped into agony once more.

 

When the pain abruptly stopped Poe's stomach lurched. Rey was curved over him, running her hands over his face. “You're okay, Poe. You're okay.” His brain flooded with ice water. Rey pet his hair and he realized he was hyperventilating. Hux had slipped out of the room.

 

“Rey,” he said.

 

“Forget about him. Dad will get him.” She kissed him chaste on the forehead. “Poe,” she repeated, a mantra of restored faith, and he didn't like the way his name sounded with that kind of tone anymore. “Poe, we thought you were dead.”

 

He grunted.

 

Rey undid his restraints, freezing for a millisecond at the three missing fingers of his right hand, but said nothing. The room cantered when she helped him stand.

 

“Easy,” she said, his right arm slung across her shoulders, her one hand holding his crippled stump and the other holding his hip.

 

They inched out of the room one torturous step at a time. The hallway was empty and clean but Poe could hear the distant cacophony of blasters and torpedo cannons and the woosh of incoming X-wings outside. It made him want to puke so he did, falling to his knees, and afterward Rey helped him up without comment.

 

“We learned about this place a little while after you died—disappeared,” Rey corrected. “This assault's been planned for months. We never—no one thought you'd be here.” She smiled. “Finn will be happy.”

 

“Finn,” Poe croaked, throat burnt with acid and vomit and screams. “Huh.”

 

Rey's smile faltered. “Poe. Are you okay?”

 

He blinked hard. “Yeah.”

 

“You don't have to see him.” Rey stopped and curled toward him so he was totally encapsulated by her comforting gait. “If you're not ready I'll take you to the carrier.”

 

“No,” Poe said, “I need to.”

 

Rey nodded. “Okay.”

 

The yard was pockmarked with craters and blood. Poe thought about all the bodies buried underneath the blaster scorch marks and dead stormtroopers and rage made his head flare in pain. They should have had more time. The Resistance should have been faster. Seeing Rey broke something loose inside of him, didn't necessarily erase the chasm within his chest but he could feel it beginning to crumble and concave, replaced with impotent fury in the face of old hope and promises stolen from him.

 

“Never mind,” he muttered. “Rey, stop.”

 

She ducked behind a wrecked TIE. “What is it?” she asked, brimming with adrenaline and barely-controlled patience, Jakku spitfire and Jedi discipline.

 

Poe opened his mouth to speak but couldn't find the words. Rey frowned in grim understanding.

 

“Okay,” she said, and tossed him over her shoulder so his face was hidden against her strong back.

 

She jogged through the wreckage toward the shining hull of the Resistance carrier. Infantrymen were shouting all around them. Poe drowned it out, not wanting to discern familiar voices from the noise.

 

He had been fantasizing about Finn for months, but now he couldn't stand to have Finn see him like this, long scraggly curls and missing fingers and grille-like ribs. As he bounced against Rey's back he kept thinking he should have killed himself too because the real Poe Dameron, the one everyone thought died and the one whom everyone wanted to see again, didn't exist anymore.

 

Poe's anger grew, bequeathing him a hot read clarity of mind like a war god's blessing, and when he and Rey were tossed into the air by an explosion too quick to see or evade he scrambled up wired with energy. The flash of the explosion left him momentarily deaf and blind, so he didn't stop when Rey shouted his name because he couldn't hear her, and instead shambled toward a body and picked up the fallen rifle.

 

Malnourishment and exhaustion kept him from full out sprinting, but he steadily picked his way through the carnage, face too gaunt and dirtied to be recognizable. His wedding ring smacked against his chest underneath his threadbare shirt as he moved, a steady beat of cold silver grounding him to the present while he set the butt of the rifle on his shoulder—the stump of his right hand supporting the barrel and his left index finger around the trigger—and mowed down stormtrooper after stormtrooper, waves of white armor and black eyes.

 

He wondered how his father felt in the trenches of Endor and Hoth, if he had been impassioned with the same animalistic virulence Poe was currently experiencing. Poe had never fought on the ground much, not in the throes of battle, but he could see it now, how it ripped through you and left a man stuck on repeat—shoot, duck, shoot, cool down, shoot, shoot, shoot—he lost himself in the blasts, heard someone yelling and registered it as his own broken shout.

 

Poe followed a herd of rebel soldiers into the base of the camp no longer restricted. He barged into a conference room alone, saw nothing but alcohol meant for the First Order advisers and officers, and strode to the table, smashed the neck of a bottle of whiskey and drank straight from the razor sharp glass, then tossed it aside and relished in the shatter.

 

He picked up the other bottles and threw them against the wall, kicked down chairs with his feet, shot random blasts into the walls, shoveled the sugary snacks on the table down his throat and nearly choked.

 

“What the hell is going on in here?” someone asked from the hall.

 

Poe lowered his rifle, panting, head blurry and heavy with whiskey. He blinked once, twice, turned his head owlishly, and saw Finn standing in the doorway.

 

His throat caught. Finn walked toward him. Poe stumbled back until he hit the wall.

 

“Poe,” Finn said. He was wearing his wedding ring, Poe saw, as he lifted his hands to touch Poe's face. “Poe. Poe. You're alive. You're alive.”

 

“Don't touch me,” Poe ordered, his voice a gritty whisper.

 

Finn's smile twisted into a confused frown, but he took a step back, always so gentle. Poe couldn't look away from his eyes. Finn started to cry.

 

“I thought you were dead,” Finn said. “They said you were KIA. No one—we went to the crash site and there was nothing.”

 

“They took me,” Poe said.

 

Finn shook his head. His hands were shaking at his sides. “Can I please touch you?”

 

“No.” Poe's stomach rolled with the sugar and whiskey and the sight of his husband. “Go away.”

 

“What's wrong? Are you hurt?” Finn moved closer again, boxing Poe against the wall, and saw Poe's right hand, the three stumps where his fingers used to be. “ _Poe_ ,” he moaned.

 

“What do you want from me?” Poe asked.

 

Finn lifted his head. “You're back from the dead. I thought—I thought... Poe, I love you.”

 

“Don't,” Poe snapped. He uselessly shoved Finn's chest with his thin arms. “Stop it.”

 

Finn caught Poe's hands, held them flat against his chest. “Calm down. Hey, it's okay. I'm here. It's okay. It's just me.”

 

The warmth from Finn's palms spread into Poe's dirty skin and he ducked his head so his hair covered his face. They stood there, both of them shaking.

 

Finn nosed Poe's temple, then kissed him. Poe froze, unresponsive. Then he reared back, tore his hands away, and pressed himself flat against the wall, putting as much space in between himself and Finn as he could. His heart rabbit-kicked in his chest and he wanted to shoot and bury it once and for all.

 

“Get away from me,” he rasped. Shuddering, his brain was overtaken by velvety panic. His face was wet and he realized he was crying. “Go away.”

 

Finally, Finn's face closed off as he retreated into his medic training, and Poe was just another traumatized prisoner, not his dead husband. Good. That was good. Poe pushed off the wall and staggered to the door, angrily wiping at his face. Finn followed him, didn't touch or even look at him.

 

A fire blossomed toward the entrance of the building. “We'll have to circle back, sir,” Finn said, voice dripping with sarcasm and poorly-controlled irritation, “follow me.”

 

“I ain't following shit,” Poe retorted, taking point. He could still walk and aim and that was good enough for him.

 

Finn snorted behind him. “Alright.”

 

“I saw a Jedi, earlier,” Poe said, playing into it all.

 

“Rey?” Finn asked hopefully.

 

Poe shrugged. “If that's her name.”

 

Finn sighed harshly but didn't push it.

 

“There was an explosion,” Poe continued, “and I couldn't see her. So I came over here.”

 

“She'll be fine. Let's worry about ourselves and find a way to get out of here.” He paused as they rounded a corner. Blood was smeared on the walls and a few bodies were littered on the floor, but the coast remained clear. They crouched down anyway, Poe continually fighting the darkness encroaching his vision. “Do you know where we are?” Finn asked.

 

Poe laughed shortly, but it was so broken and disfigured it sounded like a grunt. “We sleep outside on the ground.”

 

“Poe,” Finn began again, dropping the charade with what Poe used to regard as righteous empathy and concern. Finn kept saying his name like the other prisoners did at first, or Rey, hopeful and expectant of something, anything—but Poe didn't have nothing left to give.

 

“Let's go,” he said, rising from his haunches.

 

They were always one step behind, each successive room bloody and wrecked with gunfire and death. Sometimes they came across moaning soldier boys and girls Order and Resistance alike, barely past adolescence, begging for help even though it was too late. Finn twitched toward their voices, the red cross bright on his bicep like a hot fresh iron brand, but pushed forward when Poe didn't stop.

 

Down another hallway and through another room, they both froze and aimed their blasters at a parallel pair of Order officers who reacted too late. Poe shot first, the blast scorching a smoking, cauterized tunnel through the man's chest, and Finn glanced at him before doing the same to the second officer.

 

“We could have taken them in for questioning,” Finn informed as he walked toward them and covered their eyes, an angel of death.

 

“You shot,” Poe said. “You shot, too.”

 

“Why are you being like this?” Finn asked, kneeling between the two bodies they felled together. “I don't care about anyone else. Why are you being like this with me?” His voice cut off and he looked away. “I thought you were dead,” he reminded Poe. “Can you imagine how that felt? And now you're here and you won't even—”

 

“I did die,” Poe murmured. “And I stayed dead.”

 

“No you didn't.” Finn stood. “Is that what you think? You think after all these years I'm just going to give up on you like that?”

 

Kes' estrangement after Shara's death was a scar on Poe's mind. “You will. I know you will.”

 

“You know me better than that,” Finn retorted. “You do. Are you scared? Is that it?” He closed the gap between them and placed his hands on Poe's shoulders. “Why are you pushing me away?”

 

Poe felt feral, like a dog who was lost in the woods and rose up to the environment but didn't know what to do except bite his master upon their reunion. Everything felt like a threat. He felt so fragile anything could break him, and he knew Finn would break him the worst. He didn't want to deal with the pieces he'd leave behind.

 

He was drifting fast. “Poe,” Finn called sharply, jostling his shoulder. “Where you going? Come back.”

 

“How long has it been?” Poe asked, staring Finn in the eye.

 

Finn swallowed. “Eight months. It's been eight months since you went down.”

 

Suddenly, a unit of stormtroopers burst through the door and leveled their guns above the fallen officers. Finn whirled around, pressed his shoulder against Poe's protruding clavicle.

 

“You have nowhere to go,” the captain said. “Drop your weapons.”

 

Finn threw his blaster aside angrily, silently, while Poe held tight onto his and stared the captain down.

 

“I said drop your weapon!” the captain barked.

 

Finn smacked the blaster out of Poe's hand. It spun in circles until it hit the dead officers and stopped.

 

“Fuck you,” Poe said, the assassin's words from forever ago flashing in his head— _you can't do anything else but get angry._ His chest heaved. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Go to hell, you sons of bitches—”

 

A blast scraped his shoulder and Poe hissed, immediately clamping his hand-stump over the burn.

 

“Goddamn it,” the captain cursed at the cadet who opened fired. “Both of you calm the fuck down or I'll kill you.” He focused on Finn, helmet barely inclining. “Eighty-Seven.”

 

Poe glared but kept his mouth shut.

 

Finn's jaw stiffened. “Nines. You got promoted,” he observed.

 

“Bet your ass I did,” Nines smirked.

 

There was a connection, an old grudge that Finn could exploit to give them a window of vulnerability. Poe's body thrummed with a crazed frenzy. He only had enough time until he truly collapsed for good and then Finn was on his own.

 

The captain, Nines, lifted his helmet off with one hand and threw it across the room. He stood there in stark exposure surrounded by the faceless cadets, a watered down impression of General Hux with his hard blue eyes and red hair. There were harsh lines etched around his eyes and mouth, canceling out the boyish freckles on his cheekbones.

 

“I want you to see my face when I kill you,” Nines said to Finn. “I want to be the last thing you ever see.”

 

Poe's throat bobbed. Finn didn't move.

 

Nines gestured to Poe. “You can let him go. He looks like he's about dead anyways.”

 

Finn took Poe by the arm and steered him to the door they came through. Smoke was beginning to collect on the ceiling as the fire caught up with them.

 

Finn glanced at the unit inside, then back at Poe. “Stay low and get out.”

 

Poe surged forward and kissed Finn hard on the mouth, both of their jaws prickly with stubble and their teeth clacking together. Finn twisted his hands into the back of Poe's shirt. Then Poe shoved Finn away, tore the string off of his neck, and threw his wedding ring at Finn's chest.

 

He turned on his heel and re-entered the room, closed the door and pointed to the control panel. Nines narrowed his eyes. Poe pressed his back against the door as Finn rammed into it. “Do it!” he yelled.

 

Nines shot the control panel. It sparked and smoked. Poe lifted off the door and it held strong.

 

“Poe! POE!” Finn screamed, sobbing. Then he started coughing and choking on the smoke.

 

Poe ignored him and stepped forward. Selfish, he was so selfish. Nines' head was cocked curiously and the angle of the light erased his scars. Poe picked up his rifle from the ground. His head was bereft of hot pain or cold relief, empty and that was it, and for the first time in eight months he could see clearly and breathe easy.

 

Finn was screaming unintelligibly still. Poe ran a hand through his crazy long curls.

 

“Okay,” he said.

 

“You're one cold bastard,” Nines laughed.

 

They lifted their rifles at the same time.

 

Poe took out the cadets fast enough, Nines leaving them to be destroyed as he toppled over a table and ducked down to avoid the blasts. As Nines emerged from the ground Poe unpinned a grenade from one of the cadet's utility belt by his teeth. Nines' finger curled around the trigger of his blaster—that stereotypical stand-off cock—and Poe tossed the explosive and threw himself to the ground. The grenade burst inches from Nines' face, leaving a burnt and messy corpse with leftover flames licking the ceiling.

 

Poe advanced to the open door from which the unit came, found a control room and killed a cowering technician. He aborted all the Order's transports, shut down the flight squadrons, cut the transmissions to other ships from outside of the system.

 

The First Order was dead in the water. Poe sat down and flipped all the remaining cameras on, saw pieces of the yard flicker onto the screens. He found Rey in the chaos, dragging Finn from the fire, Poe's ring strung around his neck, beating against his chest.

 

Poe smiled. He leaned back in the seat, dropped his rifle, and closed his eyes.

 

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

His body was found by Luke Skywalker hours later, burnt rubble lifted up with the Force. The collapsed ceiling left his corpse battered unrecognizable, but the right hand was missing three fingers. Luke carried Poe in his arms, unmindful of the gore and blood, and deposited him a few feet from the long line of excavated bodies.

 

A carrier glinted in the dark sky. Luke stood by Poe as Leia exited the ship, met his eyes across the yard of the camp.

 

“You felt it,” he said as she neared.

 

She stared down at the corpse. “Of course I did.” She looked up. “Did you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Leia crossed her arms, face hard with the familiarity of grief. It was beginning to rain. “Where's Rey?”

 

“With Finn.” Luke sighed, remembering his daughter's anguished screams as Poe's death ripped through her. “It was the first time she...”

 

“I know.” Leia swallowed. “It felt just like Ben,” she said and paused.

 

Luke held his sister as she grieved her second son.

 

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

Finn had stayed by the locked door even when his throat was too raw to scream, even when the smoke evaporated his tears, even when the fire curled over his arms like a final embrace. His face pressed against the door, he listened to the blasts, the bodies dropping— _You're one cold bastard_ , Nines had said and Finn was enraged at the truth of the statement. Poe didn't sacrifice himself. He sacrificed Finn so he could die easily, pretend it was valorous. His override of the Order's controls saved the assault, but Finn would rather have Poe alive instead of another seized planet that only lead to more dead ends. General Hux was gone, disappeared.

 

Rey said he had somehow learned the Force. She and Luke left to investigate Sith temples to uncover any Dark techniques Snoke might have used to train him. Three days later, Finn woke up in the bacta tank alone and was quickly shuttled off to a private room elsewhere in the medbay.

 

Once he healed there was a public ceremony commemorating Poe's service. Rey and Luke returned to D'qar the day before, empty-handed. Rey wore a black Jedi cloak and helped Finn through the ministrations of bathing, dressing, eating. The ceremony was in the main hall of the base, all the furniture replaced with rows and rows of chairs leading to an altar where Poe's ashes sat in a simple urn. Leia spoke with resilient grace, her voice strong, echoing throughout the hall. Finn sat beside Rey in the front row and said nothing, hate and love warring in his heart. Leia spoke of sacrifice where Finn saw cowardice, but at the same time he couldn't bring himself to resent Poe, to remain mad for long—he was dead and nothing could make it better, least of all misdirected fury. In the end it was the First Order's fault for driving Poe to such an ultimatum. Eventually, years from now, he would be the one to kill Hux, Snoke's glowing gloves on Finn's hands, the sickening power coursing through him, heightened by despair and revenge.

 

After the ceremony Finn flew to Yavin IV, unsure when he would come back, unsure if he would ever come back. Leia hugged him goodbye. Rey kissed his cheek. Luke shook his hand.

 

The ranch stood tall in the trees, warm and achingly familiar. Finn set Poe's urn beside Shara and Kes, felt ostracized in his own home with all the original Damerons dead. He sat on the porch, twisting his and Poe's wedding rings around his finger, both of them now soldered together.

 

It began to storm. Finn sat and watched the heavy rain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small alternate ending to balm your broken heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUNDTRACK: [Sensible Heart by City and Colour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgfjQIE9shk)
> 
> _I get so distracted  
>  By some peoples reactions   
> That I don't see my own faults   
> For what they are   
> For what they are_
> 
> _At times so self destructive  
>  With no intent or motive  
> But behind this emotion,  
> There lies a sensible heart  
> A sensible heart_
> 
> _See I'm no king  
>  I wear no crown  
> But desperate times  
> Seem over now  
> But still I weaken somehow  
> It tears me apart   
> It tears me apart_
> 
> _I hope to learn as time goes by  
>  That I should trust what's deep inside  
> Burning bright, oh burning bright  
> My sensible heart_
> 
> ([If you're curious as to how Oscar Isaac/Poe looks with long hair.](http://56.media.tumblr.com/175d9cd7d34f18491781e7e707e6df1e/tumblr_o0gojhofOc1qj2kgto1_250.png))

In another dimension hidden behind the curtain of the Maw, Poe survived. He dived underneath the control panel when he heard the building begin to crumble and was shielded from the worst of the destruction. Luke found him unconscious but alive, and when Finn woke up in the bacta tank Poe was in bed on the other side of the room, the partitioning curtain pulled back to reveal Poe's washed hair—longer than Finn had ever seen, curling at his shoulders, soft in the harsh medbay light—and tired eyes and bandaged arms. An IV drip trailed into a vein at the crook of his elbow and a chart next to his bed said words like _mental evaluation_.

 

Finn looked down at the table next to the bacta tank, where a fresh pair of clothes were folded, on top of them Poe's ring.

 

He met Poe's eyes again. Poe rubbed his mouth with his remaining hand. He pressed a button to call for a med droid. The droid helped Finn out of the bacta tank and scribbled on some charts, then moved him to the bed across from Poe's. Once the droid left Finn stumbled to Poe's bedside, Poe's ring held tight in his fist. Poe didn't move as Finn took his left hand and slipped the ring back on.

 

“You kept it,” Finn said, staring down at Poe's hand. “That counts for something.”

 

Poe said nothing. Finn slid his hand up Poe's arm, across his chest, to his neck. Suddenly he beared down, pressing Poe into the mattress.

 

“Why would you do that?” Finn demanded, tears falling on their own accord. He felt woozy and unstable. “I didn't leave. I'd never leave you. I stayed and I heard everything. I thought you died. Again.” He dropped his head to Poe's stomach and screwed his eyes shut, inhaled Poe's scent. There was no oil grease, no cigarette smoke, no sweet Yavin air, just disinfectant and starchy cotton clothes, but Finn climbed into the bed and flattened himself against Poe's side, sought after that primal thing which separated Poe from the rest of the universe and made him Finn's.

 

Poe did not move. He laid there in perfect passivity. “Say something,” Finn begged, looking up, Poe's shirt folding underneath his cheek, “anything.”

 

“I'm tired,” Poe said, and gently pushed Finn away and turned around and closed his eyes.

 

There was no ceremony, no funeral, no ashes, just the emptiness of life when you were expecting to lose it. Poe was a wraith, hunched inward, eight-seven pounds and nine ounces, his dark eyes carved out of his face with starvation. Rey and Luke left to search for Sith secrets and Finn flew Poe to Yavin. The flight exhausted them both and they stumbled into the house and collapsed on their bed together. It had been a year since they last stepped past the threshold. The sun hit the walls the same as they used to, and a kind of peace settled within Finn at the sight.

 

Poe balanced on the edge of the bed precariously, facing Finn, his hair cast over his eyes. Finn reached out and brushed it back. Poe flinched at the touch. Finn set his hand down on the sheets between them. Poe stared at his fingers. Slowly, he lifted his left hand and laid it over Finn's, but Finn took his right and kissed each of the three nubs where his fingers had been, the scar tissue smooth and polished like pearls.

 

Poe shut his eyes. “Tell me this isn't a dream.”

 

“It's not,” Finn whispered against his sawed palm, and swallowed any other assurances. Poe didn't like to hear promises of hope and positivity, a staunch believer in the concept that you could only promise today. Especially now.

 

Finn held Poe's right hand close to his heart and they fell asleep together, their breathing syncing easily.

 

Later, when the sun had melted off the walls and it was dark outside, Finn awoke to an empty bed and the sound of rain. He vaulted off the bed and ran through the house, only to find Poe in the front yard with his head tipped back to the gale. He saw Finn standing on the porch and smiled and Finn walked out to stand next to him. Poe was the one to offer his open palm first, and Finn grasped it gratefully.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
